Ramblings by Jaya Jha in a world that is neither black, nor white!

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Mars-Venus

I have been terribly curious about this Mars-Venus stuff for quite some time now. Yeah, yeah – I mean that bestselling “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” by John Gray.

Given the reputation it has, I am not likely to agree with the philosophy of the book, but then it is even more important to hear out those who differ from you. At the same time I did not want to spend money buying this one! Today, in one of my rare trips to the library it occured to me that I could try to locate it there. Unfortunately, I did not find this particular title there, but found another one by the same author. I do not remember the title exactly, but it was something like “Mars and Venus forever together”.

I read only two chapters (since I thought I ran a risk of destroying any potential relationships of mine, if I started believing too much of the stuff there…).

Now, the good part of the book is that it identifies the problems people are facing these days correctly. The traditional gender roles are changing and hence the expectations and roles in relationships also have to change. When that does not happen, problems arise.

At a broad level, he identifies the solutions correctly too. That men and women have to understand each other better in terms of “what is going on in the other person’s mind”.

Problem comes when he suggests the solutions. This “what is going on” has been severely stereotyped in the process of suggesting how to understand each other. It is something like this. The traditional roles have been considered as the base; and the (unsaid) premise he works on is that the changing roles are abberrations. Without delving into the rationale of these abberations, however, (probably because he has not explicitly called them abberations) he takes them as given and then suggests the new role of relationships as something that needs to heal the wounds caused by these abberations.

It is this bias that stereotypes things…

But the curiosity to read the “big one” (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) still remains😀

I am a feminist who spent 32 years in the oh-so-Martian environment of aerospace. I left that career last year and now work as a Mars Venus relationship coach. I am here to tell you that Dr. Gray’s Mars Venus concepts and principles *work* for all relationships between men and women, whether its with your significant other, your children, or co-workers in the workplace. In my aerospace career, I was one of the first female managers at my aerospace company almost 20 years ago, constantly dealing with men in a man’s world. Becoming like a man did not work for me. Although we all have masculine and feminine sides to our selves, the secret is learning to how to understand and relate to those masculine or feminine characteristics. That is what this is all about. When you can relate to a person in their own language, fewer misunderstandings happen and more cooperation occurs. If you’d like more information, our http://www.marsvenus.com website is chock-full. You can also make an appointment to talk to me by sending an email to feedback@marsvenus.com. Thank you for the opportunity to speak out because I realize how much this information is needed and how much I’ve seen it work positive miracles in people’s lives.